Treasury

How to spell treasury

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce treasury

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does treasury mean?

1. nounA store or collection of valuable things, or the funds held by an organisation.
2. nounThe government department that manages a country's public finances.

Treasury in a sentence

• The club's treasury was nearly empty after the renovation.

• The treasury announced a new round of borrowing this morning.

• The museum holds a treasury of rare manuscripts in its vault.

• Officials at the treasury set the tax rates for the coming year.

Where does treasury come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek thesauros, meaning a 'storehouse' or 'treasure', the same root that gives us the word thesaurus, literally a storehouse of words. Latin took this in as thesaurus, and Old French softened it into tresor, a hoard of valuables. English borrowed the French form during the 1200s as 'treasure', and the place where such wealth was kept naturally became the 'treasury'. The spelling preserves the older 'treasure' inside it, which is why the tricky 'ea' (pronounced as a short e) and the swallowed 'u' before the ending so often trip writers up. By the later medieval period the word had also come to name the office and funds of a state, the sense behind the modern government department.

How the word is built

• treasur- (from treasure: stored wealth)
• -y (place or collection suffix)